Review: Will Dubbeld
I, uh, I have no memory of this decade.
Not because I turned on, tuned in, and dropped out.
It's because I wasn't even a twinkle in Daddy Dubbeld's eye, much less the counterculture icon I am today...
Anyway, the 1960s were arguably the Big Bang for comics. DC was (and still is...) firmly anchored in the '50s, but the Marvel Universe as we know it was birthed in the Swinging Sixties. X-Men, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, et cetera, et al, came out of the gate swinging and haven't stopped yet.
Granted, they don't always get on base, but they're at least swinging for the fences.
Amongst all of these monolithic superhero titles, Marvel offered some more subdued choices. I'm not sure if the powers that be were unsure if these hero books were the way of the future-past or what, but they were publishing Westerns, War Comics, and humor funny books alongside Earth's Mightiest Heroes and The Strangest Teens of All.
Amongst these was Chili.
Millie's. Red-Headed. Rival.
Millie the Model debuted in the '40s as a humor/fashion comic, which I imagine was standard fare for the genre. Millie appears to be an all-American blonde glamour girl whose frenemy is another model, a tempestuous redhead named Chili Storm.
That is a fantastic name, by the way.
I've never read an issue of Millie the Model, mostly due to availability and a lack of desire, but this moldy old issue of Chili was freed from a long box and added to my library.
I don't own many humor comics aside from a few Looney Tunes books given to me by my Sainted Mother. I love the funnypages and have several Garfield, Far Side, Peanuts, and Bloom County collections, but a monthly humor book never really appealed.
Calvin & Hobbes remains the holiest of holy, of course...
Presumably the Gold Standard in humor comics is Archie. Nothing can be in publication for that many decades without being on to something. Also, presumably, Marvel recognized a good thing when they saw it and aped the formula. Millie ran for something ludicrous like thirty years. Chili had less longevity, but I imagine similar popularity.
The meat and potatoes of this comic consists primarily of 3-5 page shorts showcasing Chili and her humorous bitchiness. She almost always ends up with the short end of the stick, getting her comeuppance and shaking her fist at Millie or some misfortune or another.
Interspersed between the stories are full-page spreads of Chili in fashionwear, almost in paper-doll format.
The stories are fine from a humor standpoint, albeit not really my interest. The shining star of the book is Stan Lee's writing, however. I'm not saying this just as a hando to The Man and to reaffirm my status as a Marvel Zombie, I really mean it.
He is the fuckin' man, though...
In all seriousness, this humor book is absolutely in Stan's wheelhouse. I love his superhero work but there's a lot of forced drama and gravitas that falls just short of effectiveness. Time will remember Stan as the creator of the Incredible Hulk rather than his dialogue from the Incredible Hulk.
Chili, however, has some genuinely earnest humor that flows naturally through the stories. Slapstick, camp, and puns bounce around the pages, and I'm sure Stan could've have written some phenomenal episodes of the Batman '66 series based on what I'm seeing here.
The art is just as good, but the style of cartooning doesn't stand out in the grand scheme of things. It's comparable to any book of its ilk as far as I can distinguish.
What can I say, that style doesn't stand out in my eye, but I imagine there's folks out there that can't tell a Kirby from a Kubert.
The art did remind me immensely of Archie Comics. Millie and Chili are nearly ciphers for Betty and Veronica anyway, so the comparison is easy.
After a bit of homework, I discovered artist 'Stan G' was Stanley Goldberg, Marvel colorist extraordinaire and (wait for it...) artist for Archie Comics. Granted, Goldberg worked for Archie several years after parting ways with Marvel, but I was glad I picked up on the connective tissue.
If this type of comic is your preference, you are in for a vintage treat. Chili, and presumably Millie, Patsy Walker*, and their contemporaries, will quench that thirst. I'll probably not seek out any Chili single issues, collections, or ephemera unless they're on the cheap, but I'll certainly highly recommend the series to others.
*yes, Patsy Walker was an old Marvel romance comic before she was married to Daimon Hellstrom or hanging out with Jessica Jones on Netflix
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